Chronicle 2014

by Andrew Woodmaker

  *

  Of course, it’s obvious even to the stupid what’ll happen. The utility companies will simply raise the prices to everyone else so they can cover the new mandated price reductions. They won’t lose a penny, the government will save £4bn, and the money comes out of us. The problem of course, is that the rest of the economy will lose £4bn elsewhere. The money we would’ve spent at restaurants, or buying new shoes, or who knows what else, will now be spent on fuel bills.

  Taima got a few days temp work this week, covering a sick local teacher for the latter half of the week. It was nice, she seemed so happy to be working, even if the kids were apparently, and I quote, ‘A bunch of little bastards.’ She still seemed to enjoy it, and her mood is a million times better. It’s amazing the change it can make in someone when they find work, and can provide for themselves. Just a bit of self-respect and confidence, and they perk right up. She’s like a different person. It won’t last, as it’s just temp work, but it’s so much nicer to have her around this week.

  Greece’s new currency launched to much fanfare, and immediately dropped right into the toilet. They’d launched it at a value that made their economy the same size it had been under the Euro, and it seems investors didn’t think it was worth that much. In fact the value of the new Drachma dropped by almost half in the first few days. It’s looking really bleak over there. With the halving of the value of its currency, it’s effectively doubled the value of Greek debt, which was crippling their economy anyway.

  The opinion pieces I’ve read throughout the week indicate that the biggest problem that Greece has is that many people there feel that paying taxes should be optional. If all of the taxes that should be paid were paid, then the economy would be about 30% larger, and a whole lot healthier. The inability of the Greeks to get their tax collection under control has been their biggest problem for the last fifteen years, and unless they manage to fix it quickly, they’ll end up in even deeper trouble than they are now.

  Sunday, June 8th to Saturday, June 14th 2014

  At the start of the week, Greece dominated the news again, there were riots in Athens because of inflation, people had seen a good portion of their life savings wiped out in a week. Inflation hit five thousand percent at one stage. The government has promised it’s just a temporary setback, and the currency is rebalancing itself to international markets. I don’t think anyone was listening. The only people who seemed to be doing a roaring trade were the petrol stations, who were selling the fuel people were then using for petrol bombs in the riots.

  Wednesday this week was Taima’s birthday. The boss tried to make me work late changing one of my articles, and I refused. I thought he was going to blow a fuse, and he said ‘we’d discuss it later’. I don’t care what he says, nothing he could do to me would be as bad as being late home on Taima’s birthday, really!

  We went out to dinner, then to the cinema to see an advance screening of the new How to Train your Dragon 2 film, which is due to come out in a couple of weeks. Perfect timing for her birthday, the first UK showing. I thought it was almost as good as the first one, which we’d both liked. For a pressie, I got her a silver ankle bracelet, she likes her ankle jewellery, and she seemed pleased with it. I hope she was, because her present and the night out was all the money I could scrape together. I hate being - not poor, there are millions in England much worse off than I am right now, but, not as well off as I’d like to be.

  The ongoing civil war in Syria took a major turn towards the end of this week. The rebel fighters, who’ve been fighting the government for over four years, made surprise gains on Friday, and by the end of the day, seemed to have control over the entire capital of Damascus. The president had apparently left the city, and even as I write this on Saturday morning, the TV is showing pictures of the rebels looting the presidential palace.

  It’s quite hard to believe that suddenly, a fight that’s been in deadlock for what, a year, just resolves itself overnight. Losing the capital is obviously a deathblow for the government. They can’t recover from that, like in Libya back in 2011, as soon as Tripoli fell, the war was effectively over. As usual, John Simpson for the BBC was the first reporter on the ground. That guy is amazing, he seems to just have no fear, and is always right at the front of any conflict. He more than anyone is my influence to be a great reporter.

  There is apparently some fighting still going on in Damascus, but there are only pockets of resistance, and with more and more of the rebel forces entering the city to secure it, it seems highly unlikely that what forces are left to the government will have a chance to re-take it.

  Sunday, June 15th to Saturday, June 21st 2014

  On Monday, after a weekend glued to the TV, I got into work to be told I had another evaluation. The boss pretty much tore me a new one. I think this is his revenge for my not staying to work late last Wednesday. He’s insisted I go on a training course next week, to learn how to write better articles. I resisted the urge to deck the smug arsehole, he was smirking as he said it, I know this is his way of getting back at me. He can’t just fire me over it, as I was well within my rights as per my employment contract, but he’s also within his rights to insist I go on a training course. In Edinburgh. All week away from home. Not impressed.

  Taima took it in her stride, she has a full weeks worth of work again next week, as she’s covering student exams. Not the most exciting job, sitting in an exam room with 150 kids making sure none of them talk, or have smartphones, pads, or any one of a hundred other devices.

  This year is the first year that schools have started to regularly employ EM interference in exam rooms. They’d had to after last year, when they discovered a student in Liverpool had had minor surgery to have a small receiver implanted into their earlobe, and had a micro-camera in their glasses. They’d transmitted the paper outside, to someone they’d paid to answer questions for them, and tell them the answers. You’d have to think if they put that ingenuity into actually studying, they’d be able to pass without cheating! The kid was only caught because he did so well when he was expected to barely pass, and confessed. And so, a new law was rushed through to allow jamming of signals in future exams.

  Thursday

  Syria. I’m watching TV as I write. You no doubt already know what happened today, as it will go down as one of the blackest days in the history of the world. But I’ll recount it as it happens, as I see it. I can only see it on TV, I’m not there, thankfully, but I can see the pictures, I can see what’s happened. Cameras are still running in Damascus.

  About two hours ago, the Syrian government struck Damascus. They launched a massive chemical attack on the city, using gas, nerve agents, poison, who knows what, that is unclear. What is clear is that they’ve completely destroyed the city.

  At around 8pm UK time, 10pm Syrian time, when it was dark, the Syrian government’s air force struck with maybe 40 planes, most of what’s left of their air force. Each one of them had a massive payload of chemical weapons. They dropped bombs all over the city. Starting in the east, and moving west. Within 20 minutes they’d blanketed the city. I was watching the news when it started, John Simpson was reporting from there, he was watching the rebel government hold a meeting in the parliament building, swearing in a new president of Syria. Very symbolic. And that’s when the attack started.

  From within the building they heard the bombs start to fall. He and his cameraman ran outside to see what was happening They had a good shot of the aircraft bombing the city, a few responses from rebel anti-air, but air attacks have always been the biggest weakness of the rebel forces. They’ve never managed to obtain serious anti-air capabilities, or an air force of their own.

  Of course, the BBC reporters had no idea how serious it was. It looked like aircraft were dropping bombs, but in Syria an air-strike is something that you don’t even get off the loo to hide from, it’s such an everyday event.

  John Simpson was just talking into the camera, talking about the strikes, when they starte
d bombing his area, and he just - died. He got a funny look on his face, and fell out of camera shot. The camera fell to the floor, and by chance landed with him back in frame and we saw it all happen, in full colour, less than a metre away from the camera. Everyone watching the news saw what happened. I won’t describe it, I feel sick thinking about it. The camera kept on rolling, no doubt the cameraman was dying behind it. Beyond John Simpson, you could see others running, and then falling. I don’t know how long it lasted, the BBC pulled the feed once they got over the shock. I’ve never seen a BBC news anchor cry on air before, but they did, both of them. And I joined them. I’ve never seen anything like it, it was, he just died in front of a million people on TV.

  Friday

  I stopped writing last night, I couldn’t just keep talking into the pad while that was going on. I’m sure that all of what I was seeing on TV is archived and you can view it elsewhere, I’m not going to attach it to this diary entry.

  It’s now morning on Friday. I’m in the office, but nobody is working. We’re all watching TV. Even the boss forgot to scowl at me this morning. If we were a bigger paper, we’d be covering this, but we’re distributing today with a lead story about a car that ran over a guide dog. I can imagine that this edition will be even more budgie liner than usual.

  We’re watching the reports from the BBC. They have other reporters in the country, but they all seem, stunned. I can’t blame them. Later last night the planes came back, and dropped more bombs. Once they knew what was happening, the US unilaterally took action and sent planes into Syrian airspace. They have hazmat teams on the ground and they’re reporting that pretty much everyone is dead or dying within the city.

  Estimates are for about 800,000 dead. Luckily, if one can find anything about this lucky, over the last two years of fighting, many civilians had left the city. Back in 2009 before the fighting started, the population was closer to two million. Yesterday morning it was closer to one million. This morning, around 200,000 have fled to the surrounding countryside, and of those who knows how hurt they are.

  We still don’t know what they used, chemical weapons obviously, nobody thinks they had biological weapons. A BBC expert said that the pictures that had kept on coming in after they cut the feed to us, seemed to indicate something like sarin was used.

  Friday midday

  New reports that the US planes from the carrier John C Stennis have destroyed the planes that had dropped the bombs, at an airfield just outside the second city of Aleppo. There’s a UN emergency session going on, but good luck in the UN doing anything, they’re so deadlocked it’s amazing they can decide what time to break for lunch.

  Friday, about 1pm

  The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has been on TV, and declared the end to the civil war, and that Aleppo is the temporary capital of Syria pending ‘reconstruction’. The callous bastard didn’t seem to even care he’d just had almost a million people killed. He was busy saying how glad he was that the fighting was over. And yeah, I bet it will be, with all of the rebel forces streaming into the capital to hold it last week, they’re not even on the radar any more. He’s won, no doubt. I wouldn’t give a rats left testicle for his chances of surviving alive till the end of the year, but he won his war. I just feel sick that this has happened, I hope the Russians are happy, after blocking action against Syria for the last three years, if they’d let the world protect the civilians like we all wanted, this wouldn’t have happened. This is as much the fault of Putin as it is anyone else. I hope he feels proud of himself.

  Friday evening

  Sitting on the sofa with Taima, watching the TV. We ate, I can’t remember what, but we’re just watching. Survivor stories now, people who were on the outskirts of the city, or who were in the western side, who had time to run, but not many ran. Why would they, just another bombing run, they just thought it was the same as all the others, and so they didn’t bother to run.

  They’ve shown some footage from the US hazmat teams on the ground. The BBC wouldn’t show that kind of thing, we saw that on CNN, and it was horrific. People had just died where they were, dogs, cats, people, nothing was alive. No birds in the air. From what they said, it isn’t usual for sarin to kill so many, but there was just so much chemical dropped, the whole city is covered in oily residue, still deadly to touch or breathe in. Those hazmat guys aren’t paid enough, really. All over the place, cars went into walls, into each other, glass is broken, and they’re walking through it, when a single cut in their suits could kill them, and they’re still looking for survivors, they know there won’t be any but they’re still looking. They deserve a medal. They deserve all the medals, they really do.

  Saturday

  The government has announced HMS Illustrious is heading to the area. As it carries helicopters, it’s ideal for aid distribution to the survivors, there seems to be little need for military intervention now, the opposition forces are pretty much gone. As news has developed, it seems that the Syrian government deliberately withdrew from Damascus, to draw in the enemy, and then destroy them, not caring how many civilians died.

  I hope we send in the SAS and bury every last one of them that was responsible for this.

  Turkey has said they’re going to send in ground troops into Syria, and the Syrians have threatened to use chemical weapons on any forces crossing the border. I don’t know what Turkey will do now, if they back down they look weak against someone that just killed a million civilians, if they don’t their soldiers could be gassed to death. Great, this is just going to spread.

  Sunday, June 22nd to Saturday, June 28th 2014

  Sunday

  The last thing I wanted this week is to be away from home. Taima seems pretty freaked by what happened - hell, I’m pretty freaked, and I want to stay home, but the boss is insisting I still go on this stupid training course in Edinburgh, and so here I am, on the train on Sunday evening, northbound and in a foul mood. His stupid petty small minded little brain won’t budge a centimetre. He has this little area of power and he wants to show us all how big he is. I so want to quit my job, but I can’t, I need to find something else first, and yeah, good luck to me with that one. Unemployment is up this month, I can’t see that being a great indicator that I’ll find a new job quickly. I think I’ll spend my evenings this week applying for new jobs, though. I’ll have crap all else better to do in Edinburgh.

  Monday

  It just feels like the whole world is holding its breath right now. Are we all going to invade Syria, like we did in Afghanistan in 2001? I’m not a warmonger, but I hope so. This can’t be allowed to stand.

  The course today was a washout, full of teenagers all learning basic writing skills. This is more like a creative writing course than a course to improve journalistic skills. The guy teaching is an old guy who hasn’t once mentioned the word journalism. Besides which, who on Earth is paying attention to a course. I spent half the day with my pad tuned into the BBC. I had to have it muted and on subtitles though, it would have been annoying to the rest of the class to have my earpiece in, cos no matter how quiet it is, it isn’t as quiet as a classroom. The news was all predictably about Damascus, I don’t think anything else even got a look in. Reports from the teams searching the city were the same today as since the attack. Still not a single survivor has been found. Not a one.

  I wonder if the class teacher has even heard what’s happened. He droned on without really paying attention to his students, and seemed to be in a world of his own. What a waste of time.

  Rest of week

  The rest of the week pretty much followed the course of Monday. Dull classes, watching the news as I ignored the teacher. Of course he didn’t care, he’d been paid. Who knows how much the boss paid to send me on this farce, but whatever it was, he was ripped off. Not that that makes me sad.

  Things in Syria haven’t moved. The US has a carrier off of the Syrian coast, HMS Illustrious is there too, as is the French Charles de Gaulle carrier. Even the Japanese have a carri
er, the Ise, on the way, their first deployment outside of Japanese waters in 60 years. The Chinese are being conspicuous by their absence, but I expect to see their only carrier, the Liaoning, show up any day too. The coast of Syria is going to start looking like an aircraft carrier car park before too much longer.

  The UN is doing what it does best. It’s talking. The Syrian ambassador to the UN was almost lynched, but for some reason, gee I wonder why, he had a whole bunch of bodyguards with him when he entered the UN chamber.

  Turkey hasn’t invaded. That’s probably a good thing. They’ve sent some planes over Syrian airspace, I don’t really know why, I’m not a military strategist, maybe they’re daring the Syrians to shoot them down to give them an excuse to invade, but really, they already have a million reasons to, as do the rest of the world.

  In other news this week, on Thursday, the energy companies flat out refused to take the pain of the winter fuel allowance onto their own shoulders. They’ve said they’ll charge OAP’s the same amount they charge everyone else. They have no responsibility to give favouritism from one group to another, and in fact to do so would be against EU law that says fuel should be available at a uniform price regardless of the status, age, or means of the customer.

  I did a quick check and they’re right. If they did what the government tells them to, they would break EU law. If they don’t they’ll break UK law. This is one going straight to the European courts, I can see it now. In the meantime, the pensioners in the UK are looking at a cold winter. I don’t envy them.

  I got home late on Friday evening, past midnight, but finally, I was home. I was so tired I almost fell asleep as Taima was showing me how glad she was that I was home. Almost fell asleep - not quite :-)

  Sunday, June 29th to Saturday, July 5th 2014

  Over a week later, and finally the UN acted, but they may as well not have bothered. The Russians negotiated the teeth out of the resolution, so their good friends in Damascus, sorry Aleppo, get to keep their jobs, and don’t get 100,000 foreign troops on their soil.

  The end result of a weeks worth of debate? A no fly zone.

  How much use is a no-fly zone when the US already destroyed what was left of their air force. It’s utterly ridiculous. I can’t remember when the UN has seemed so pointless, except the last time they failed to act, and the time before that. Oh and the time before that too. I know they do some good work, but they just have no credibility left when it comes to resolving conflicts. They should have had this fixed three years ago, but Russia wouldn’t let them.

  Even being from a country that has a veto, I reckon getting rid of the five vetoes that the security council has is essential for them actually ever getting anything done. Look at the Israeli problem, the US will veto anything that happens there. Russia vetoes anything about Syria or Iran, it makes it complete deadlock. On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing in some ways. A country that can just nuke their enemies, maybe a veto is better than a conflict over something that they seriously disagree with, and the chance of nuclear war. So, maybe the situation isn’t as black and white as I think it is, who knows. All I know is, I’m pretty disgusted with the UN right now.

  I reported back to the boss on Monday, he shrugged his shoulders when I said the course was pointless, and just told me to get back to work, he didn’t care. I spent the rest of the day talking to people in town, and got a few local interest stories started. The guy who called me about the trees being cut down was the most amusing. I’m not writing an article about it, but I’ll mention it here. He called me again, I have a horrible feeling he thinks I’m his private publishing channel now, and I’ll print whatever he says. He wanted to complain about the trees again. Because they’ve all gone, the wind has increased around his house, and he wanted to complain that the wind had blown off his toupee while he was gardening over the weekend. I admit it, I laughed. I just couldn’t help myself. I know it was wrong of me, but I just cracked. I apologised, but he was a bit surly over it, but you know what, I needed that. I haven’t had a laugh in weeks, it feels like. I felt about 10 years younger afterwards.

  For the rest of the week, I covered my stories, and watched as absolutely nothing happened in Syria. A group of protesters have set up camp outside the Syrian embassy. Won’t do much good, we’ve expelled the Syrian ambassador and his staff, but it’s symbolic, I guess.

  Greece and Germany started up again this week. They’d had a couple of weeks off from bickering with each other after Damascus, but I think they’ve decided enough is enough, time to get back to the serious business of wagging fingers at each other.

  The Americans had their independence day on Friday. It was a bit of a muted affair, from the TV pictures I saw. A lot of places cancelled their fireworks and parties because of Damascus. I’m always in two minds about that kind of thing. Yes, it was terrible, and we should be serious about it, but a celebration and some fireworks will make people feel better. It’ll make people happier, and I don’t see that as a bad thing. Call me callous, but I’d like to see more happy people, even if bad shit is happening too.

  Sunday, July 6th to Saturday, July 12th 2014

  I’ve booked this week off of work. I just needed a break. A week of not having to deal with the boss, not having to wade through the underworld of Didcot... OK that’s an exaggeration, a week of not having to desperately wander the streets looking for something that isn’t too boring to report on. It’s my first ever paid week off from a job. I get to sit around and do nothing all week, and be paid for it. How awesome is that. And I get to do it three more times before next April too!

  I was quite pleased when I got a delivery on Monday, the new battery for my pad had arrived. A month’s battery life on a single charge, so the marketing bumph says, and so far, it seems to be living up to the claims. After putting it into the pad on Tuesday and charging it up overnight, I’ve not had to recharge, and it’s still saying it’s 87% full (this is Saturday now). I haven’t used the pad much, just a bit of web browsing, making a few notes on next weeks stories, but still, my old battery would be dead by now without a recharge. I’ve had to be careful to remember to not put it down on the charging surfaces. So easy to forget. I think I did give it an extra couple of percent charge when I went off to make a cup of tea earlier in the week, but still, it’s still pretty awesome.

  I didn’t want to, but I did spend a lot of the week watching the news. The information junkie that I am, I couldn’t just switch it off. Had a couple of small days out with Taima, we went to see a film midweek, and yesterday we went to London and wandered round the British Museum for a while. I think she enjoys it there more than I do, I mean, it’s cool and all, but, it’s all dead and in the past. I’m more a future, technology, current events kinda guy. But she wanted to go and so I put on my best enthusiastic face and went along.

  Sunday, July 13th to Saturday, July 19th 2014

  Getting back into the swing of work. Mondays after a week off are hard. I don’t like them, and I think they should be banned. Mondays after a weeks holiday should be days you get to just sit in the office and re-acclimatise yourself with the idea of slaving away for the benefit of others. No actual work needed, just time to relax and re-orient yourself. But no, back to the grindstone as soon as 9am hit.

  There was actually some real local news this week. There was an announcement that the power station, Didcot-A, which has been switched off for the past year or so, is being demolished to make way for a new power plant. That means cooling towers being blown up, lots of excitement, explosions, and a few news cycles I can burn up writing about it. It’s planned for September 20th. Good of them to arrange it for a weekend, where people can watch it. No news on what the new plant will be. Dare I hope it will be solar, that we’ve decided to invest in some renewables. Of course not, it’ll be some new polluting monstrosity.

  Syria has been in the news again, they’ve demanded compensation from the US for the loss of the planes that were destroyed on the night of the attack o
n Damascus. The US president came on TV and used some very un-president-like language to tell the Syrians how likely that was to happen. I’ve never heard a head of state tell another head of state to, and I quote, “go fuck yourself,” on live TV before. I think that president Assad is pushing his luck here. The world hasn’t punished him for the murder of a million people, and so he thinks he can get away with anything. If you ask me, the NATO countries, and the US in particular, are just spoiling for a fight and it wouldn’t surprise me if they just ignored the UN and went in and wiped Assad’s smug face all over the wall, along with any military forces that support him.

  The Greece and Germany thing has come to a conclusion. It’s good because they’ll stop being aggressive to each other, but it’s bad, in that as long as it didn’t go too far, it was really really funny seeing their politicians making snide comments and badly disguised sarcastic remarks. Obviously I wouldn’t like to see anything serious between them, but the dialogue has been a bright point of each week. However they’ve agreed that Greece will carry on repaying its debts to the EU, and the EU will offer guarantees on the Drachma. It means, in effect, that the Drachma had a massive rebound this week, not up to where it was when they re-launched it last month, but at a respectable level that experts are saying is a fair representation of its value. Almost overnight the riots in Athens and other Greek cities petered out, and it looks like this could be a real solution for them. They still have massive problems, but at least this one has stabilised for now.

  Sunday, July 20th to Saturday, July 26th 2014

  Monday was a bad day. We got reports in the early afternoon of yet another US school shooting. It was at a high school (so ages 14-18), and it ended up with 24 dead, all of them teachers. It seems a whole gang of kids all had had enough with their teachers, and eight of them got hold of guns and went into school to kill as many teachers as they could. It does defy belief, I mean, why do they still have such a stupid gun culture over there? Look at the figures people, more guns mean more shootings. If you have no guns, then shooting levels will go right down. It’s really hard to kill people by pointing at them and yelling “BANG”. But no, they still sell millions of guns a year for their right to be protected and safe, and it makes them so unsafe they don’t even understand.

  At least this time it wasn’t dozens of kids dead like it usually is. And the shooters all surrendered, which was also unusual. Usually they end up dead having killed themselves, or made the police do it. Not that teachers being dead is a good thing, of course, but it always seems more tragic when it’s a bunch of kids who never got a chance at life. Of course the deaths of 24 people who’d made it their life’s work to educate and enlighten the young is as much of a tragedy, but it doesn’t feel as bad. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it’s how I feel.

  And so what did we cover in our newspaper? Well, we had to have a link, so we covered - truancy.

  Yup, we had a full page spread about how local schools were seeing too many kids skipping classes, and the paper had me go and hunt around town for them and interview some of them. I won’t dignify the article by including it here, it was utter trash. Linking something like that shooting with how kids in the UK aren’t attending classes. Shameless, it really is. I hate my boss more and more each time he does something like this.

  We expected all week that the US president would make an announcement about gun control over there, that maybe he’d grow a backbone and actually do something positive with his presidency, but, as per usual, a vast roar of silence from the White House. By the end of the week, the story was pretty much forgotten, and the US gun freaks got to keep their guns for a few more months till the next massacre of innocents, when yet again, I expect nothing will be done.

  Sunday, July 27th to Saturday, August 2nd 2014

  A quiet week, which was welcome. I finally had to recharge my pad when it ran out of juice on Tuesday. Not too bad, that’s almost a month of power on a single charge with my new battery. Taima had four days work at the local school doing sickness cover, which made for a much nicer atmosphere at home.

  I started getting ill on Wednesday, and by the next morning, it was full-blown flu. I’ve taken the rest of the week off. There’s no way that evil-boss will believe I’m ill, as I’ve booked next week off on holiday for my birthday. I don’t care, he can fire me if he likes and I’ll take him for unfair dismissal and get a chunk of money for while I look for a new job. I just don’t care, I feel like death, leave me alone.

  Sunday, August 3rd to Saturday, August 9th 2014

  A second holiday week in a month, how awesome is this, especially as I started to feel better almost as soon as Saturday came round. It really is a coincidence, but sometimes coincidences are awesome. We’ve not got the money to do anything expensive, but we booked a three day midweek break in Cornwall. I spent my birthday in the middle of nowhere on the coast. It was nice and warm, with a sea breeze to stop it getting too hot (I don’t like too much heat at all), and we enjoyed just acting like a pair of teenagers, splashing each other in the sea, I got buried in sand up to my neck for Taima’s amusement, lots of fun. There was nobody else on the beach at all, so while she was getting changed I stole her clothes and she had to chase me naked down the beach for a good five minutes. It was a really good break, and we did a lot of laughing. Sometimes we both tend to be a bit serious, and it really made for a nice change. We tried to book an extra day at the B&B but they were booked, and expecting new guests that evening so we reluctantly headed back to Didcot on Friday evening.

  The only downside is that Taima ‘accidentally’ forgot to pack my pad. I know I packed it, and I know she unpacked it whilst reorganising the bags. I don’t think it was that bad a thing really, it stopped me just spending all break working or web browsing, or other things I can do at any time. I’m glad she did it.

  Sunday, August 10th to Saturday, August 16th 2014

  Ahh I hate Mondays after holidays. Wait, I’m sure I said that this time last month. Yep, I did. So, back to work, and covering all of the big stories that matter to Didcot. The traffic lights they removed just after I moved here, well, they’re being put back. A guide dog was killed on the crossing a few weeks ago, and there’s been a bit of an uproar about it. In as much as a small town can uproar. More a quiet murmur of irritation.

  There were some disturbances in London later in the week. The group of people protesting at the Syrian embassy managed to get past the police who really weren’t trying too hard to protect it, and burned the place down. Absolutely gutted the building. Unfortunately it also gutted the Portuguese embassy next door. The Portuguese probably didn’t want their neighbours, but they DID want their embassy, and the news was full of the Portuguese ambassador complaining and the prime minister apologising for the fire. I can see their point, but I can see the point of the protesters burning it down. A million dead and not even a slap on the wrist, thanks to the UN being unable to organise a pissup in a brewery.

  A million dead. You can’t even imagine that kind of number. One dead, you can see it. 24 dead like at that US school, it’s a big thing. But a million, it’s like, how do you react to that? How do you even comprehend it? It’s like, everyone you’ve ever met, and everyone you’ve ever even seen, even on TV, that’s probably about a million people. Every single person that has ever come across your vision, in your life. They’re all dead. How can it be so big? I don’t know. It’s too much to understand for anyone.

  Sunday, August 17th to Saturday, August 23rd 2014

  The austerity measures have continued this week. A new bill has been announced which will link retirement age to average life expectancy. To be honest it seems like a good idea to me. We had loads of protests a couple of years ago when they changed the retirement age from 65 to 68, so changing it to a linked number makes a whole lot of sense. The proposal is for male retirement age to be 10% short of life expectancy, female to be 15% short of life expectancy. Which by my reckoning is 72 for men and 70 for women. That’s
a jump that will get right up some peoples nose. I expect more protests.

  But what else can we do. We can’t keep planning to retire at age 68, with the funds for a 5-10 year retirement, and live for an average of 10-15 years afterwards, it just isn’t sustainable. At least this way, as life expectancy increases, so does the amount of time we work, the amount of money we put into pension funds, and so it covers the correct amount of average retirement life.

  OK so maybe I’d see things a bit differently if I was older, and I was closer to retirement and I was about to have to work for four more years, but I’m not, and I don’t. The advantage of the younger generation, we can see these things more more clearly.

  Tuesday

  Yep, protests it is, and a riot in Sheffield. Thankfully around here it’s quiet, which is a bit of a surprise, as the demographic of the area is certainly tending towards the older generations. I’ve written an article for this weeks paper which covers the facts and tries to explain why it makes sense, and how we can’t just take all the benefits of longer life and greater health, without paying for them by working a little longer. Somehow I have a feeling that this won’t go down well with the boss. He’s in the age range where he’s really pissed about the change. I reckon he’s in his late 50’s, and so he’ll be feeling those extra four years.

  Late Tuesday

  Wow, I’m surprised, he didn’t refuse to publish it. He said it gave him something to think about. I’m beyond stunned, I was expecting another rant about doing my job properly, and instead he actually read the article with an open mind and agreed it was good to go in the next edition. I still don’t like the guy, but I hate him a bit less today than I did yesterday.

  Rest of week

  Well, the protests died down quickly enough. It seems nobody was that serious about it, even Sheffield has cleaned up after the night of rioting. It makes me laugh. ‘We’re really angry, we’ll stay here and protest all year if we have to, we’re going to fight until – ohhh look, something good on TV, best get home so I don’t miss it.’

  Sunday, August 24th to Saturday, August 30th 2014

  Well, the big news this week is that right on the heels of the government announcing a change in the retirement age, Scotland has announced its date for its independence referendum. Clever move by the Scottish government that is. London makes an unpopular announcement, and Scotland says ‘right, we’re off’. It’ll make the vote a lot closer than recent polls have suggested, that’s for sure.

  October 12th is the date for the vote. I expect we won’t get too overloaded with advertising on TV down here, after all, we can’t vote, but I feel a bit sorry for everyone north of the border They’re going to get wall to wall propaganda by both sides. It’ll be like a US election, and I expect the victory won’t go to the side that puts their case across better, it’ll go go the side that pisses off the electorate least.

  Here is the article I wrote on it, I think it covers both sides, but makes it clear which way I think it should go.

  Scotland to Vote

  It has been 307 years since the Act of Union brought Scotland and England together on May 1st 1707. In just over a month’s time, on October 12th 2014, we will see if the union is strong enough to survive what many believe to be its biggest test to date.

  At 7am on that day, Scottish polls will open, asking the public one question. ‘Should Scotland remain a part of the UK’.

  The ramifications of the vote could not be more serious. If Scotland leaves, then the UK will lose around 8.5% of its population, and with it a corresponding percentage of our GDP, that will push us out of the top ten largest economies in the world, losing many exclusive privileges we have because of our membership of that club.

  If Scotland decides to stay, then the matter is likely to remain closed for the lifetime of everyone in the country. One of the conditions of allowing the vote, is that a no vote will mean no further vote can be called on the subject for a hundred years.

  These things alone mean the vote is probably the most serious one that the Scottish people ever have, or ever will, take part in.

  In practical terms, a breakup will lead to a short term gain for England. Scotland receives more money from the government per head of population than does England, and so the change in financial allocation will mean more money can be spent per person in England. The agreed distribution of North Sea Oil will mean that both countries would continue to benefit from this revenue, and with much of the processing being done in Scotland, this will be a good source of employment for them.

  However, on the downside, Scotland will either be outside of the EU, or will have to negotiate entry. The EU has ruled that Scotland will not become a member as soon as it splits. And of course, all new EU members must adopt the Euro, and there is fierce opposition to the Euro north of the border.

  With England’s relegation out of the top ten economies in the world, we will have less say in the big global decisions. We will of course remain an important country, but our influence will be much reduced. For Scotland the effect will be even more pronounced. Their economy will end up at roughly the size of the economy of Norway, and their global influence will effectively vanish overnight.

  Should Scotland stay or go? That is, ultimately, a matter for the Scots to decide. Looking back over the last 300 years, both countries have benefited greatly from the union. No country in the last 200 years has had as many inventors and innovators as Scotland, and their association with England has allowed what is a small country, to have global presence way above that which it could have achieved alone.

  Culturally we have enriched each other, and we have stood as allies against fascism, communism, and a thousand other threats that have endangered this island. Will we still do so by the end of the year?

  Only they can decide that.

  Sunday, August 31st to Saturday, September 6th 2014

  New unemployment figures this week. It’s up again, from 16.2% to 16.5%. They say that 20% is a bit of a tipping point when we start getting real problems that are hard to recover from without drastic measures. Looking at Greece, you can see it in action. The riots may have died down, but you can see the tension, and see the desperation on the faces of the people on TV. They hit 35% a few months ago. It’s hard to see how they can pull it back from the brink. I mean, OK, getting a handle on corruption would be a start, but I don’t even know if that would be enough.

  Taima has been doing a little more sick cover work for a local school again this week, but I have a bad feeling it may not be happening again. Apparently she had a ‘disagreement’ with the head teacher. Apparently he said something that was a bit racist, and she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and so, yeah, not good.

  Don’t get me wrong, she shouldn’t have to keep her mouth shut, the head was a million percent in the wrong, but, sometimes you just have to suck it up. The guy is old, from that generation where casual racism was the norm. She’s always spoken well of him, and so I expect he didn’t mean anything by it. Not that that excuses it, but when your job is at stake, and the head isn’t a bad guy, maybe calling him a racist pig isn’t the best tactic.

  Of course, then I didn’t help by saying this to her, and she was in tears and I felt like a shit for not being more understanding. Relationships suck sometimes, I never know when I need to be understanding, or honest, or supportive, or just to shut my own mouth. She wasn’t angry at me, she knew I was right, I think I should have been more supportive and less ‘well that was stupid’. I can be thoughtless sometimes.

  I took her out to dinner the next night, Friday. After, we had one of those long talks that went well into Saturday, I think we got to bed at about 6am. I think we cleared a lot of air, and neither of us shouted, which is good.

  Sunday, September 7th to Saturday, September 13th 2014

  Tuesday

  It’s all kicking off again. Turkey sent troops across the border into Syria on Monday. The Syrians made good on their promise, and used chemical weapons against
them. Why on Earth the Turks sent their men across the border without protection, when they’d been warned, I’ll never know.

  The Syrians have no air force left, but they have plenty of artillery and missiles. The missiles, Scuds like everyone in that part of the world seems to own, were pretty much useless The Turkish army had borrowed Patriot missile systems a few years ago, and they took out every single missile before they got close. The artillery, on the other hand, decimated the Turkish division that had been sent over the border.

  TV crews in Turkey have shots of them routed and breaking for the border, many of them with dead or dying in their vehicles. This is a real embarrassment for Turkey, but maybe it will be the final straw, and we’ll finally do something about Assad.

  Wednesday

  The Turkish government has fired the head of the army. They’re claiming that the incursion was not authorised by the government, and was the fault of the area commander. If you ask me, they’ve been made to look like idiots, and are blaming someone else for their mistakes. The government and army in Turkey have never got on well, probably because the army keeps overthrowing the government whenever they interfere in army politics.

  Friday

  What am I, some sort of prophet or what?

  This morning, the fired commander of the Turkish armed forces staged a coup, and deposed the government. The whole Islamist government is under arrest. They lasted for precisely the half an hour it took for the army to seize control. It seems that the only casualties were the presidential bodyguards who didn’t feel like surrendering.

  They’ve locked down the entire capital, but it seems to be quiet. Nothing like the uprisings that took down half of the Arab governments over the last few years, most of which ended in massive bloodshed. This was over in under an hour, and stability was never lost. They have experience in coups, do the Turkish army.

  Sunday, September 14th to Saturday, September 20th 2014

  Well, I’m forced to take back some things I said a few weeks ago. If you were paying attention to my entries, you would see I wrote about a school shooting over in the states. 24 staff killed. I went on a bit about how they should take all the guns away, and stuff like that. I still believe that, but, over the last few days, more information has emerged, the whole thing wasn’t anywhere near as black and white as it seemed.

  I mean, a school shooting, how more black and white can you get. Shooters bad, victims good. It isn’t really up for debate.

  Except this time. You see, it turns out that the kids were acting as a group in self defence, and in defence of their classmates. The staff that were killed, it’s now being said that they were members of a paedophile group that had effectively taken over the school. One of them got a job as school principal, and then hired more of them as teachers, until almost every teacher was involved.

  The kids had told their parents, the police, but nobody believed them. They were accused of making up stories, of trying to get their teachers fired, because in Bible Belt America, no teachers would be like that, obviously the kids are lying.

  And so, what else do they do? Nobody to turn to, they defended themselves. I don’t know if it was right, maybe they could have tried other things, but they were being abused, systematically, literally by the class-load, and I don’t know what the right response is to something that horrible.

  The mainstream media were all trying to backtrack on their earlier stories, some of them like the BBC were just saying ‘yep, we made a mistake, but it was an understandable one’, while some of the tabloids were pretending they were right all along. The Daily Mail was still sticking to the original story, in a kindof ‘we’ll either be right and get all the glory, or we’ll look so stupid we’ll all be out of a job’ kindof way.

  As the week went on, even the Daily Mail changed its tune and admitted that they were wrong. And who said you can’t teach old dogs - old stupid xenophobic sensationalist lying rumourmongering dogs - new tricks.

  The week ended better though. On Saturday, it was big bang day at the power station. Didcot-A was blown up at midday, three cooling towers all went down at once. It was really cool, they did it so they went like dominoes, the first crashed into the second which fell into the third. Awesome. Hundreds of people were there to watch, not just from Didcot, I reckon about half of them were from Oxford and other local towns and villages. I don’t know why I enjoyed it so much, but I did. Taima stayed home, said she’d seen enough explosions on TV recently and didn’t feel the need to see any more. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I loved it!

  Sunday, September 21st to Saturday, September 27th 2014

  I got a call this week from the Oxford Daily. They’d done some more digging and had found that the general CC’d on the Reaction Engines Freedom of Information letter was in fact in charge of the US Air Force’s scramjet project. That’s very interesting, as they’re in direct competition with the Sabre engine project. I gave Alan Bond a call and we had a chat about it. When I told him what had been discovered, he was quite excited. His theory is that the government is actually doing something on their behalf and trying to pitch the Sabre engine to the US, after their continued failure to build a reliable scramjet engine. That sounds pretty plausible to me, even if highly surprising to find the government actually being proactive for a British company. I guess the conspiracy theory can be put away now. Shame, it would have made a good story, if I could have worked out what the conspiracy was.

  I sent an email off to the US Department of Defence, asking for confirmation they were considering investing in the Sabre engine technology. I could hear the red tape from the other side of the Atlantic when the email arrived. I expect it’ll be weeks, maybe years, till they reply, if they ever do. They have no obligation to reply to a reporter in the UK, unlike our own government.

  Taima discovered that the school she’d been working at on and off to cover sickness and whatnot, has started to hire someone else. It looks like her row with the head there killed her chances of getting more work from them. I bit my tongue, and didn’t say anything. I just offered hugs and support, and hopefully she’ll find some other work soon.

  The week ended on a pretty horrible note. There was early morning fog in the area, and there was a big smash on the M4 by junction 13. About 30 cars were involved and five people died. Work called me up at 7am, and got me and a photographer, Floyd Benton, to go take a look, get some witness reports, and take some pictures. Floyd is a veteran, been on the job for 30 years, so he just took it in his stride. He’s worked for some of the big papers, and he’s just winding down his career in Didcot, because ‘It’s nice and easy work, and I don’t have to traipse through third world hellholes to get my shots’.

  I got some witness reports, he got some photos. I threw up. I then blacked out when I realised there was an arm on the road, with no owner. Floyd didn’t laugh at me, said he’d seen bigger and tougher men than me faint when they saw this kind of thing for the first time. I’d never even seen a dead body before this, and those poor people were dead in nasty nasty ways.

  Then again, is there any other way to die? It’s never a nice thing to do.

  Tragedy on local roads

  Thick fog on Friday morning was responsible for the worst traffic accident in the last 20 years on the M4. 34 cars were involved in the pile-up, with five occupants of a minibus fatally injured after a lorry crashed into the side of their vehicle. A further eighteen others were injured, some seriously, and were taken to the John Radcliffe hospital.

  The cause of the accident seems to be a car suffering a tyre failure at high speed, and hitting the central reservation. In the thick fog other drivers were unable to see or avoid the accident.

  Jane Gadsden was on the slip road just about to join the motorway, and witnessed the accident out of her right window.

  “I didn’t really see that much, the fog was pretty thick. I heard cars slam on their brakes, and I could see a couple of cars were going literally sideways as they skidded, they came out of
the fog sideways, and went back into the fog, followed by bangs. There was a big truck jackknifed and that made a huge bang, as I assume it ploughed into the cars that had crashed. If I’d been ten or fifteen seconds further ahead, I’d probably have been down there among all that lot.”

  Many other drivers were too shaken up to give us an account of the events. Sergeant Griffiths from the British Transport Police confirmed that according to radar tracking information from roadside installations, many of the vehicles had been speeding. “It often happens, especially in the morning rush-hour. People want to get to work and avoid the jams, and so they put their foot down. Unfortunately, this time their cavalier attitude to safety has led to fatalities, including an entire family of five who were heading into London on a day trip.”

  With too many drivers breaking the speed limit on our roads, we can only hope that this accident will serve as a wakeup call to remind them that if they crash at high speeds, they definitely won’t make it to their destination on time. If ever.